Page 20 of The Teacup Dragon Sanctuary

And Iris smiled in that fond way she always did whenever Sebastian Starling was mentioned. ‘He’s so like Arthur really. No wonder the emporium is his sanctuary. And it’s thriving with him there. Really thriving.’

Portia, still eternally guilty of failing him when he’d crashed out of the Academy so spectacularly, hadn’t pushed things. Seb hadn’t shown his face at the castle since she’d come back so she guessed he was avoiding her.

‘Hello?’ she called out. ‘Seb? Are you here?’

Of course he was here… somewhere. The door was open. There were shelves running from floor to ceiling, each one crammed full of… things. Portia didn’t know what half of them were. Books, boxes, objects, bottles with dubious contents, artworks, items of jewellery, twists of straw and dried flowers, masks that might have been made from nightmares…

She closed the door behind her which set the bell jingling again. It was far too loud in the quiet of the shop. Jade shuddered on her shoulder and pressed in closer, clearly nervous. Portia reached up to cup her hand over the dragon’s head, shielding her.

‘Custom!’ a raucous voice squawked loudly. ‘Custom! Seb! Seb! Custom!’

The sound of wings and feathers filled the air and Portia ducked just in time as an enormous black raven swooped down from the open rafters. He gave another harrowing cry as he landed on a cluttered counter, knocking a scattering of objects onto the floor. Something smashed.

‘Good to see you too, Lore,’ Portia lied.

Black beady eyes fixed on her. She had never liked her uncle’s bird, not as a child and not now. She especially didn’t like the way Lore was eyeing Jade, like the little dragon was a treat she had brought to feed him. Jade gave a low whistle of alarm and tried to burrow into Portia’s hair.

‘Don’t you even think about it,’ Portia warned the raven in a low voice. She flexed her fingers, drawing a touch of magic to her, just in case. The air between them crackled as the magic of the shop picked up on her emotions, and her own innate abilities reacted more strongly than expected. The atmosphere in this place was thaumaturgically charged and it set all her instincts off like alarm bells.

Lore preened his feathers for a moment, as if he was entirely innocent, and then, without warning, took off again, diving straight at her, talons extended.

Or rather straight at Jade.

Portia let out a snarl, felt the magic gathering beneath her skin, undirected and angry. If she blasted Seb’s raven out of the air, it was his own fault.

Before the spell could release, Jade rose on her hind legs, wings spread wide and gave a shriek of her own, far louder than should be possible for so small a creature.

The bird rolled back through the air, a ball of feathers and shock, and crashed into one of the bookshelves. He came up, cawing in anger and distress, flapping about wildly to regain his equilibrium.

‘Well,’ said Seb, appearing around a corner from one of the back rooms, with a book in one hand, his glasses perched on his head, almost lost amongst his unruly curls. ‘I’ve never seen that before.’

‘Get that bird under control,’ Portia snapped at her brother.

Seb just shrugged. ‘Funny you think I have any sort of control over him at all. Besides, you and the dragon seem to be the aggressors here. Come on, Lore. Get yourself together, you silly old thing.’

The bird cast him a baleful look and hopped back up onto the counter, moving closer to Seb like he might protect him. He shuffled back and forth, making soft grumbling sounds until Seb reached out and scratched the back of his head.

‘Don’t pick fights you can’t win, mate,’ he said affectionately. ‘How many times?’

He looked smaller in here, her little brother. Soft around the edges. Blurring into the shop their uncle had saddled him with. He was dressed in old clothes which hung off his slender frame, probably Art’s clothes. They looked like the kind of thing an elderly professor would pick, not a young man in his twenties.

His light brown eyes glowed like amber in the dim light and she could sense the magic in him, swirling, undefined, barely under any kind of control. Much like the shop. He looked… tired, if she was honest. Worn.

‘How… how are you?’ she asked.

Seb smiled wanly which was an answer in itself. ‘All right. You?’

That was the question, wasn’t it? How was she? Because if anyone knew a fraction of what she was going through with the Academy, it was Seb. ‘Not great. I’m still waiting to see if they’re kicking me out or not.’

There was a long moment of silence. Something she couldn’t read flickered in his eyes and the air around him shivered. Chaos magic, they called it in the Academy, and that was on the nicer end of what they said about the power bottled up in Sebastian Starling’s body. He didn’t mean to cause problems but somehow they happened all around him. And the more he tried to contain it, the worse the eventual eruption was. Here in the shop, it felt more controlled, as if the emporium itself was able to syphon the worst effects off somehow. But in the Academy…? That had been a disaster.

She wondered for a moment if he would ask about Milo – how he was, what he was doing, had he mentioned Seb at all? – but he didn’t. If the words played on the tip of his tongue, he swallowed them down quickly, before they could slip out.

Instead, Seb gave a soft laugh, self-deprecating, sad rather than mirthful. ‘At least it’s still a question of if. I’m sorry, Portia. It’s not fair. They’re fools.’ She had once said something very similar to him. The pain of it all hung between them. Not to mention Milo. Seb had been besotted with him and Milo had seemed to feel the same way. But after everything that had happened… She didn’t know when they had last spoken. She didn’t dare ask either of them. Seb had left. Letters went unanswered. Hearts were broken. There was no need to rake through the pain.

‘Tea or coffee? I’ll put the kettle on. Come through. Don’t worry about Lore,’ he said as she hesitated. ‘You’d think he’d have learned his lesson by now. Don’t bully teacup dragons. Just because they’re smaller than you, doesn’t mean you can take them.’ He grinned at Jade who was still standing on Portia’s shoulder, chest puffed out, wings flexing. ‘Especially not that one, it seems. Looks like you’ve found your perfect match, Portia.’

Portia petted the dragon again and felt the purr through her skin. She shouldn’t feel quite so proud of Jade putting the raven in his place, but she did.